


The Long Path to Hope

by rinskiroo



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Bad Parenting, Child Soldier, Childhood, Clone Wars era, Family, Gen, Pre-Rogue One, Snowoks, Unintentionally AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-12 13:05:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9072910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinskiroo/pseuds/rinskiroo
Summary: "I've been in this fight since I was six years old."Before he was a spy for the Rebellion, before he was a child soldier fighting against the Galactic Republic in the Outer Rim, Cassian Andor was a boy living on the harsh world of Fest.  His father sought to give him his best chance, but his mother was fighting her own small war against the Seperatists.  Rebellions are built on hope, but this isn't a rebellion.  It's a fight for survival.With the new information about Cassian that came out in early January, this story is now considered AU.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯





	1. Chapter 1

            “Come on, my boy, it’s time to get up,”  the man stifled a cough as he pulled the young boy into a sitting position to stuff him into his coat.  The boy barely protested as he was still mostly asleep and once the jacket had been zipped up and the knitted cap pulled over his head, his small body fell back down onto the thin pillow of his cot.  His father moved about the small room stuffing extra clothes, toys, various other things a boy of five might need into a pack.  He paused for just a moment in his rushing around the room when the scratch in his lungs became too much and he released the hacking cough; it burned and tore at his throat and when it was finished he spent several more seconds trying to catch his breath.

            The boy still slept.

            The man sighed and ran a scarred hand through his thin, brown hair, but continued to get ready for the journey.  He found his own thick coat, hat, gloves, and scarf, wrapping himself in the cocoon of warmth before slinging the pack over his shoulder.  “Cass, it’s time to go.”

            The boy groaned and coughed as his father pulled him back up into a sitting position.  He was getting too heavy to be carried around, especially when they were both bundled up to brave the frigid Fest climate and his father was carrying a heavy pack.  “Papa, my throat hurts,”  young Cassian said, his voice hoarse.

            “I know, my boy, that’s why we need to go right now,”  he said with a wince as he pulled Cassian out of the cot and shoved his hands into a pair of mittens before leading him out of the house.

            It was a small hut in the cramped industrial settlement, but it belonged wholly to Raul Andor and had been the Andor family home for generations.  Fest was mostly a frozen wasteland with only a few settlements dotting the bleak tundra.  Those few settlements were dense with people and factories, industry and all manner of mad science; a far cry from the mineral mining of centuries past.  They left deep into the night; half of the street lights were broken so it was easy to slip out and avoid the very few people who wandered the streets at such an hour.  It was slow, dragging a half-sleeping child through the crunching ice until they reached the outskirts of the settlement.  He tried to pull his son faster; they needed to make it to the speeder before dawn.

            If he were a religious man Raul would have asked the Force to grant them swifter boots, to stop the sun from rising for just a few more minutes, but he was fairly certain the Force had long since abandoned Fest.  The planet was in opposition to the Jedi after all.

            “Where are we going?”  the boy mumbled sleepily as his father lifted him onto the speeder before climbing on behind him.

            He pushed it on low impulse for several minutes, sure that they were far enough away from the town before opening up on the throttle.  “Into the mountains, you’ll be safe there.”

            It felt like a dream to young Cassian, to be shepherded out into the night and loaded onto a speeder.  He had never been on a speeder before, didn’t even know his father owned one.  He’d never even been out of their settlement before.  The mountains were far away, somewhere off in the distance.  In his childish mind he thought it must certainly take days for them to reach the towering ridges.

            The Fest star had one planet and that planet had no satellites.  It was a great wonder how such a place could support human life.  Though to the man on the speeder, the question was more if the planet was keeping them alive, or killing them.  That scraping feeling was constantly in his lungs, though he managed to swallow back the need to cough while driving the speeder.  There were a few times that he had to pull over, telling his son he was fine and that he just needed a moment to get his bearings.  He hid the dark tar specked with his own blood that he had coughed up and spit into the snow.

            Whatever had been done, it was in Cassian now too.  He rubbed a hand over his son’s chest whenever the boy started to cough, no matter how slight.  The boy was still young, he could fight it, but he couldn’t stay in the town anymore.  “Just a bit further now,”  he said over the hum of the speeder as it raced across the snow to the foot of the mountain.

            The sun reached its highest point as they wound their way up the switchback trails.  At first glance they appeared ill-used, but a keen eye could pick out the snow blown and brushed over the tracks.  As the hours passed, Raul found himself wanting to pray again—pray that they were going the right way, that he wasn’t just driving his son out into the mountains for them both to perish once night came again.

            They stopped at a flat, wide overlook to rest, relieve themselves, and dig a snack from the pack.  Though bored from the monotonous ride, Cassian was fully awake now and amusing himself by puffing out clouds of air and watching his warm breath dissipate in the cool air.  “Papa, do you think there are planets that are hot all the time the way Fest is cold all the time?”

            With a bit of frost hanging off his mustache, the corner of his father’s lips pulled into a grin,  “Of course, there are many planets where it is hot all the time… and others where it is cold too, just like Fest.  And some that have both hot and cold.”

            “That’s just silly, Papa!  Hot _and_ cold?!”  the boy giggled furiously until it morphed into a hacking cough.  His father rushed over and held onto him, rubbing his back until it passed.  Thankfully he hadn’t coughed anything up, much to Raul’s relief.

            As they made their way back towards the speeder, there was a strange, almost growling noise on the wind.  A few squeaking cries sounded and there was a rustling of what sounded like sticks before several small creatures burst from the rocky outcroppings near the overlook.  They were no more than a meter in height and covered in white and grey fur and wielding sticks with sharpened flint ends.  Most were wearing stitched leather caps on their heads, though one had what looked like a holo transceiver around its neck.  They were squealing and grunting in their native language, thrusting their spears menacingly towards the man and his son.

            Cassian jumped behind his father, his fingers digging into the thick fabric of Raul’s coat as the man held his arms up, trying to pacify the jumpy natives.  “Easy now, we’re all friends here.  I’m Andor, I’m looking for someone.”

            “Papa!”  Cassian whimpered.

            A pair of the snowbound Ewoks with the largest of spears approached the two humans slowly, growling as they shook their weapons.

            “Brisa, enough!  You’re scaring your son!”  the elder Andor yelled out towards the crowd of hostile creatures.  He shouldn’t have raised his voice, shouldn’t have let his throat constrict in such a way and take such a huge suck of the bitterly cold air.  His chest heaved and he fell to his knees, nearly vomiting into the snow as his body struggled to breathe through the hacking and wheezing.

            Tears had formed in young Cassian’s eyes as his father fell to the ground.  His fingers still clutching the coat jerked back and forth, trying to pull his father back to his feet.  The monsters around them seemed to hesitate, but didn’t back away and didn’t cease their low growling.  The ground rumbled slightly under them at the sound of more speeders approaching.  The Ewoks raised their sticks above their heads, shouting in their strange language as if cheering on the new arrivals.

            The pair of speeders came abruptly to a halt, spraying wet snow into the air.  Both riders were women and wearing thick coats with armored vests and helmets that looked decidedly worse for wear.  One of the riders had a large blaster rifle slung over her shoulder and upon stopping laid it over her lap.  Though she didn’t point it at the intruders, her finger was resting obviously on the trigger.  The second rider, the shorter of the two, got off her speeder and walked towards Raul and his son.  She reached for her helmet; short, curly brown hair popping out as the helmet came off.  She pulled the scarf down from around her mouth, her face one of shock.

            “Raul, what are you doing out here?”  she asked, watching as he tried to catch his breath.  Her dark eyes found the boy cowering next to his father and if there was any regret in this woman, she did not show it.  She crouched down, reaching her hand out,  “Come on out, boy, let me take a look at you.”

            Cassian sniffed and looked from the shaking form of his father towards the woman.  He knew who she was, there was some long ago memory of this woman and the soft lullaby she had sung once, but for a young child it had been far too long for her to be anything more than a stranger now.

            “Get up,”  she said a bit more insistently, any warmth in her tone fading away.  “Wipe away those tears, now.”

            There was another sniffle and a glance at his father, who was beginning to look a bit better.  When Raul wiped his sleeve across his mouth and nodded at his son, Cassian got to his feet and slowly began shuffling over to the woman.  He stopped nearly a meter away from her, not wanting to get any closer.

            “Oh, Cassian,”  a small smile had begun to pull at her lips as she took in the boy that was so much bigger than the last time she saw him.  “How old are you now?”

            Cassian held up his hand, but it was covered with his mitten so his little digits couldn’t convey what he was trying to tell her.

            Brisa’s smile fell away slightly as she glanced back towards Raul who was finally, slowly getting up out of the snow.  “Does he speak?  Do you speak, boy?”  she asked Cassian.

            “Give him a moment, Brisa,”  Raul said gravelly.  “He’s frightened.”

            The woman scoffed and stood back up straight.  “Papa didn’t toughen you up at all, did he?”  She shook her head as she looked at Raul,  “Finally decide to join the fight, Andor?”

            There was a scowl on Raul’s face as he looked at her and then at her little band of militant bears.  “Is there a place we can talk?  Out of the cold?  Alone, maybe?”

            Brisa let out a loud, shrill whistle and raised her hand over her head in a circling motion.  There was some grumbling by the Ewoks as they hurried off to where they had hidden their own speeders and the other woman Brisa had arrived with revved the engine on her bike.  “Follow us back to camp,”  she told Raul, then glanced down towards the boy.  “Closely, it’s a dangerous pass.”

 

~*~

 

            The pass leading up to the mountain bunker had indeed been narrow and treacherous, but thankfully it wasn’t long.  Brisa Tyn’s small militia had made their stronghold from an ancient mining operation.  The opening used to be part of the ventilation system, but they had blown it out to make room to house their speeders making this the main point of entry.  There was an old lift system that dropped a cage deeper into the mountain into the hollowed out areas large enough to house sleeping quarters, meeting areas, staging rooms, and storage.  It was a small town buried under the mountains, kept running by antique generators and warmed by pockets of hot air being pushed up from deep in the core of the planet.

            From what Raul could count as they walked through the old mining tunnels there were a few dozen fighters that Brisa had managed to convince to follow her.  Most appeared to be natives to Fest, humans and the snow Ewoks, but there were other aliens as well from elsewhere in the Outer Rim.  The woman carrying the heavy blaster rifle, she seemed to follow just at Brisa’s heels everywhere she went; on her thick jacket was the patch of the Mantooine Rangers.  Other than the fact that Fest and Mantooine were constantly at odds with each other, all out war at the worst of times and distrustful at the very least, Raul was fairly certain the Mantooine Rangers were already fighting the Seperatists on behalf of the Republic.

            “You’ve gathered quite the band of rebels here, Brisa,”  Raul commented as they came to a stop in what passed for their command center.  There were a few computer consoles, but most were dark.  There was a chalk outline on the wall of what he assumed to be the nearest settlement along with the garrison.  It was a sad tell at the state of their operation if cave drawings were more reliable than computers.

            “Someone has to stand up for this miserable rock.  They’ve mined all they can and now they’re just poisoning the rest of it,”  as she spoke the bitter words, Brisa bent down to the central console in the room and opened a panel, working inside it until it flickered to life.  “I’ve got a decent engineer, but you were always good with your hands.  I can use all the help I can get.”

            Cassian’s hand was still clutched tightly in his father’s, he had been too scared to let go.  The lift had been shaky and uneven, the hallways were cramped, and everything smelled so much stranger than it did outside the mountain.  He let out a few quiet coughs, drawing the momentary attention of the adults, but his father just placed a hand on top of his head before continuing his conversation.

            “Yeah, you must be desperate if you’re taking their help,”  his head jerked towards the Mantooine woman who had been quietly shadowing them.

            Brisa sighed and waved off her companion,  “Just give us a minute, Charsk.”

            “I’m not here to stay, Brisa,”  he said once the other woman had left.

            Brisa scoffed as she looked back towards Raul,  “What is this then?  You dragged that boy all the way out here for ten minutes with mommy?  And here I thought _you_ were the better half.”

            “You said it yourself, they’re poisoning this place.  It’s in the soil, in the water, in the air.”  There was a pleading look on his worn face, scared for what it meant for his own body but absolutely terrified for what it could do to their son.  “Please, Brisa, he can’t stay down there.”

            “Papa,”  Cassian pulled on his father’s hand, a nervous sound to his voice.  He was a child, but he wasn’t deaf and he wasn’t an idiot.  His father had said he wasn’t going to stay, but that Cassian could no longer stay in their town.

            “I’m fighting a war here, Raul!  If we want to save this planet and stop the toxic zones from spreading, we have to fight!”  she shouted at him, her hands waving in punctuation.  “I can’t look after a kid!”

            “He’s _your son_!”  Raul snapped back at her, the strain in voice evident.  He choked and coughed, but managed to steady himself and swallow back another fit.

            “No, Papa!”  Again tears had started to spring up in Cassian’s brown eyes, slowly slipping down his chapped cheeks as he hugged his father around the leg.

            Raul’s eyes closed as he fought back the pain in his chest, and not from the toxins slowly devouring his lungs.  He bent down next to his son, pulled the knit cap from Cassian’s head and ruffled his hair, now slightly damp from being inside the warm mountain.  “Hey,”  he said softly, forcing out a smile.  “It’s time to be brave, Cassian.  You have to stay here with your mother and her friends.  It’s safer for you here.”

            “But I want to stay with you, Papa,”  they boy moaned, his chin trembling.

            “I know, and I want to stay with you, too.”  Raul wrapped his arms around his son, hugging him tightly.  “We don’t always get what we want in this life, Cassian.  We have to make the most of what the Force gives us.”  The Force had given him a wonderful son, and now he had to give him his best chance.

            “I love you, Papa,”  Cassian said as he sucked in a huge gasp of air, trying to swallow back a sob and be brave for his father.

            Raul’s raw throat burned with emotion and he quickly rubbed his eyes against the rough fabric of Cassian’s coat before the boy could see his tears.  “I love you, my boy.  We’ll see each other again.”  It was a lie.  Raul knew it as soon as the words left his mouth, but it had to be said.  The boy had to have hope.

            He gave Cassian another firm squeeze and then got to his feet before his resolve broke.  When he looked over at Brisa, part of him was spitefully pleased that even she wasn’t immune to how difficult and emotional this was.  He realized it was a sad way to think of her, for once they had loved each other quite deeply and he would always be thankful for those times.  Raul bit back all of those heated arguments and their final, unpleasant parting and walked towards her, leaving Cassian standing sniffling and rubbing his nose with his sleeve.

            “Raul—“  she started, but he surprised her by wrapping his arms around her and hugging her, though not nearly as tightly as he had their son.

            “I don’t have much time, Brisa,”  he said quietly, not wanting Cassian to overhear.

            “Then why go back?”  Brisa asked just as quietly, trying to avoid the lump in her throat.

            “I think you know.”

            Raul Andor didn’t want to die inside some mountain, abandoned by its industry and taken over by guerrilla fighters.  He would die in his home, the home of so many Andors before him.  He’d go to work every day in that factory that had killed him until the day when he could no longer pull himself out of bed.  He was a man of responsibility and stability, to his very last.

            Cassian stood in the snow outside the mouth of the cave leading into the bunker watching as his father’s speeder followed another back down the mountain pass.  The boy was flanked by two women, his mother and her Mantooine shadow.  He sniffled, but took a deep breath of the cold mountain air and made himself not cry.  Cassian would be brave like his father wanted and held onto the hope that one day he would return.


	2. Chapter 2

            Brisa and Charsk had a bet going on when they thought Raul would return for Cassian.  Brisa doubted he would make it a day, but Charsk was a more pragmatic sort and had seen the desperation on the man’s face.  In three days’ time, Raul had not returned for the boy and Brisa begrudgingly accepted that the extra mouth to feed that had little to offer their resistance would be sticking around.

            Though unhappy at having such a responsibility thrust back on her, Brisa was not ignorant to the fact that he was still just a child.  She set him up with a small cot in the communal bunk room closer to the wall and out of the way of foot traffic, as well as being near to her own.  She tried to set him up with the task of sorting through refuse for reusable bits, but the boy had no idea what she actually wanted and the task became an exercise in frustration for the both of them. 

            Cassian for his part was as unobtrusive as a five-year-old could be.  He tried to follow his mother around, though several paces behind her as to pretend he wasn’t actually shadowing her.  He ended up underfoot several times from people not knowing to look out for a small child.  Though the Ewoks were nearly the same size, it seemed the human-sized fighters had gotten used to smelling them before seeing them.  Ewoks grunted and sniffed at the boy, but paid him just as little mind as everyone else.

            Charsk seemed amused by the situation, but then her thought processes were always a little suspect.  The human woman from Mantooine was completely bald except for a bright red rat tail braid hanging from the base of her skull.  Perhaps bald was a fashion choice, but it likely had more to do with the jagged, angry scar that cut across the whole left side of her head.  Cassian wondered how she had got it, if some beast had mauled her head.  He tried not to stare, but she caught him a few times.  Before he could look away, she would grin, bearing sharpened teeth.  Perhaps it wasn’t her intent to scare the child, but it was often the result.

            At the end of the week, a whistling went down through the shafts of the mine.  A sort of signal as the emergency klaxons weren’t always functioning.  One of the grey Ewoks shoved a spear in young Cassian’s hands, whose eyes became as large as cruiser exhaust ports.  They pushed him along with the pack, shuffling quickly into the lift cage.  Once stuffed into his coat, as they had taught him to do quickly, he followed the swiftly moving creatures out of the mouth of the cave with the stick still held in his trembling fingers.

            They stood out in the snow all looking down the mountain towards the great black plume of smoke in the distance.  There was an explosion, and then another.  Even as far away as the mountain stood, there were subtle vibrations in the ground beneath their feet.

            “Lock down the air scrubbers, ionize all the filters, seal the doors.”  Brisa began quickly issuing commands to her people, sending them to their duties.

            “How long?”  someone asked.

            Brisa looked out down into the valley as the plume of smoke and toxic fume rose further into the sky.  “I don’t know.  We’ll use some of the power for the sensors—every few hours take a reading.”

            As the gathered bodies began moving back into the mountain, Cassian stood, still clutching his stick, looking out on what could only be the settlement—his home.  He sniffed slightly, moving his sleeve up to rub under his nose.

            At the subtle noise, Brisa turned, finally noticing that he had come out with the others.  “Who gave you that?”  She snatched the spear from his grasp and thrust it at an Ewok before grunting sharply in their language.  “Come on, those toxins will be worse for you.”  She grasped the shoulder of his jacket, turned him back towards the cave, and roughly pulled him inside.

            Back in the warm, relative safety of the mountain, Brisa sat Cassian down and dug around in one of the supply closets until she found a hand scanner.

            “Do you know what we do with those spears, boy?”  she asked him as she dragged a chair over to where he was already propped up on a crate.

            Cassian just shrugged his small shoulders.

            “Still not speaking?”  Brisa grunted and shook her head.  The boy hadn’t said a word since Raul left.  She sat in the chair and held up the scanner to Cassian.  “You know what this is?”

            Cassian nodded mutely, his thick, dark hair falling in front of his eyes.

            “Do you know what it does?”  she asked him, a brow quirked.

            There was another shrug of his shoulders.

            She sighed and let out a sharp whistle, startling the boy.  Moments later an MSE mouse droid rolled slowly into the supply room, chirping an acknowledgement.  For the first time since arriving, Cassian grinned at the site of the droid.  “You like droids?”  his mother asked.

            There was another nod of his head, but still no words.

            “Okay, this is what I need you to do.  Take the scanner,”  she said, placing it firmly into his small hands.  Next, she pointed at a button under the readout screen.  “Press this button to take a reading.  Follow Emfor and whenever it stops, take a reading.  It’s going to be some cramped spaces, but you’re small enough—you can fit.”

            Cassian immediately pressed the button.  A series of bars and letters flashed across the screen, quickly replaced by a green blinking light.  The boy then held up the scanner facing Brisa, showing her the results.

            “ _Cassian_ ,”  she said his name sharply, nearly reaching to grab the scanner back, but the boy pulled away and clutched the device close to him.  “The scanner will run out of power if you keep hitting the button, so you can _only_ do it when Emfor tells you.  These readings are very important, boy.”

            Brisa crouched down to adjust the restraining bolt on the mouse droid and issue it a few basic commands.  It’d be a lot easier if they could get the droid to do the scanning, but it was a simple machine and the larger droids wouldn’t be able to get into the tight spots they needed to scan.  She told the droid to take Cassian to all the pre-designated coordinates and to _make sure_ he was in the right spot before using the scanner.  Then move on to the next location, quickly.

            “See how the light’s green now?”  Brisa jabbed her finger at the readout of the scanner.  “If it turns red, find me or Charsk.  It’s very important, you got that?”

            Cassian looked up at his mother and nodded.

            “When you’re done, take it to Rohzag.  He’s an Aefan, you know what that is?”  When Cassian just shook his head, Brisa scowled and muttered “useless” under her breath.  She looked back down at the droid, hoping adding another command wouldn’t overload its tiny, inept circuits.  “When you’re done, take Cassian to Rohzag.  Now go on, get out of here, both of you.”

 

~*~

 

            There was a small fire beetle flittering from one side of the corridor to the other, its bright red wings flapping as it hopped from one lumpy wall to the next.  Cassian had never seen anything like it.  There were some burrowing bugs that popped out from time to time if the snow melted, but he’d never seen one that could fly before.  Part of him wanted to reach out and try and catch it, try to figure out what made it different from other bugs and how it had figured out how to fly, but mostly he was content just to watch it.

            M4 again rolled impatiently into Cassian’s leg, whirring and beeping for him to start moving toward their next target.

            Cassian bent over and gave the mouse droid a few thumping taps with his hand before finally following the droid as it led him towards another narrow shaft.  Some of the vents and exhausts he was scanning were in nice wide spaces where the only obstacle was finding a chair or crate to stand on to reach it, but many were in these cramped, narrow holes that he had to shimmy in and out of.  Cassian coughed and then rubbed his sleeve under his nose before screwing together his courage once more.

            With one hand outstretched with the scanner, he used the other to push himself through the tunnel.  Not only was it cramped, pressing against shoulders as he squeezed through, but the rocks were foul-smelling and the odor clung to him even after he’d brushed the sediment from his clothes.  After pulling himself back out, Cassian plopped down on the ground breathing quickly through a few coughs that pressed against his chest.

            The droid gave what could only be described as a beep of concern, but Cassian showed it the readout of the scanner: all green.  The droid once again rolled into his leg to get him to move on.

            There were nearly two dozen of the readings to be done and it took Cassian and M4 almost the whole day to do it.  It likely would have been a lot quicker if Cassian had moved faster between the locations instead of stopping to inspect every bug, misshaped stone, and other droid they came across.  The room M4 led him to was similar to every other cave-like chamber in this mountain.  There was metal shelving bolted into the red-brown stone holding all manner of equipment, and a computer console pushed into the corner was dark from lack of power.  In another corner was a cot with pile of clothing and datapads jumbled in with the blanket.

            As Cassian walked into the room, his large, brown eyes taking in all the sorts of mechanisms and baubles stacked on shelves and spilling out of crates, an orange alien looked up from his work bench.  The alien lifted the bulbous goggles away from his eyes and stared down at the boy.  “What are you?  Some hairless Ewok?  No good for the snow.”

            Cassian stopped and looked at the orange creature.  He had arms and legs like a human, but had a singular, long headtail with many intricate, raised markings hanging over his shoulder.  His rectangular face held a pair of small, black eyes and a flat nose with thin lips.  Unlike Charsk’s unintentionally menacing grin, when the Aefan smiled it was pleasant and warm.

            M4 rolled up to Rohzag and whirred before turning around and rolling back towards Cassian.  The droid rolled into the boy’s feet several times and beeped.

            “Emfor says you have something for me, bald Ewok?”

            Cassian held up the hand scanner, showing it to him, as if Rohzag could read anything off of it at this distance.

            “I wasn’t going to look at ‘til I was done with this, anyway,”  Rohzag stated, and went back to humming to himself as he worked.

            The Aefan was sitting at a large workbench, also covered in parts, tools, and other miscellanea.  He pulled his goggles back down over his black eyes and lifted up the piece he had been working on: the head unit of a B1 battle droid.  It was slack, without power, its pointed, snout-like features now no more fear-inducing than a puppet.

            Cassian’s eyes went wide at seeing it, his little feet nearly tripping over each other as he quickly walked over to the work bench.  He put the scanner on top of M4, who gave an annoyed beep, then grabbed the side of the table with his fingers, pulling himself up onto his tiptoes.

            “Fan of these metal beasts?”  Rohzag grinned down at the boy, turning the robotic head in his hands slightly to give Cassian a better look.  When Cassian’s small hands started to reach for it, Rohzag noticed the crumbs and sticky residue that had been left behind.  “No, no no, why are you all… that’s gross, don’t touch anything.”

            Rohzag pressed the button on his stool, lowering it closer to the ground before hopping off.  As he approached Cassian with a rag pulled from one of the pockets of his dirty, grey jumpsuit, the boy could see Rohzag was much shorter than he looked up on the stool.  As the orange alien stood over him, he was only about half a meter taller.  He wiped off the table, then grabbed Cassian’s hands, rubbing the already dirty cloth over them.  Figuring the hand scanner was likely also covered in whatever food substance the boy had consumed over the course of the day, Rohzag bent over and carefully picked it up with two fingers, trying not to stick his digits in the worst of it.  As he wiped it off carefully, he took the time to quickly scroll through the acquired data, grunting slightly at the information.

            “Looks like all the air scrubbers are working.”  Grunting again, Rohzag tapped the mouse droid with the toe of his boot, telling it,  “Go tell Brisa the air scrubbers are good.  Retest zone twelve tomorrow.”

            M4 beeped out an acknowledgement before rolling in a circle to turn around and heading back out of the workshop.

            When Rohzag looked back after putting the scanner into a crate, Cassian had clambered up onto the stool at the workbench.  His curious brown eyes darted all across the parts of the disassembled Confederate droid.  With a smirk, Rohzag walked up behind him and pressed the button to raise the seat up higher.  His orange fingers found the head unit he had been working on and showed it to Cassian, who was now sitting almost a head higher than him.

            “I’m trying to reprogram it, but some of its processes are hard coded.  Part of the beauty of the Seps mass assembly.”  Inside his large goggles, Rohzag’s eyes were grinning, intensely amused at the boy’s wonder.  Though Cassian still never spoke, Rohzag was happy to talk for the both of them.  He explained the different functions the droid could do, its different parts from the chassis to the processing cores.  He showed Cassian the datapad with the programming calculations he had run for wiping the droid’s memory and loyalty subroutines.  Rohzag wasn’t sure how much the boy could understand, but he explained it all as a patient teacher, without an ounce of the condescension he knew the child was likely to get from the more on-edge inhabitants of the mountain.

            At some point, Cassian was yawning every few minutes which Rohzag seemed to be oblivious to.  Once he had nearly fallen off the stool falling asleep, but the sound of quickly stepping boots and the sharp twang of Brisa’s voice immediately woke him up.

            “What the hell, Rohzag!  You send the droid back, but not the hand scanner or the boy?”

            Rohzag just chuckled, unfazed by their leader’s usual temper.  “Scanner’s over there.  And this hairless Ewok was helping me.  Can’t imagine he’s any use out in the snow.”

            Brisa frowned, giving them both an incredulous look as she crossed her arms over her chest.  “Helping?  So you’ve reprogrammed that droid finally.”

            Rohzag snorted, then reached over to lower the stool for Cassian to hop off.  “It’s delicate business.  Working on it.”

            “And zone twelve?”

            The Aefan’s shoulders shrugged slightly as he took the seat vacated by Cassian.  Rohzag turned away from the pair of them and back to his workbench, uninterested in Brisa or her tone.  “Slightly elevated, just retest it tomorrow.”

            Brisa let out her own huff of annoyance as she snatched the scanner from the open crate before walking over to Cassian.  Before she could grab his shoulder or his arm to steer him to where she wanted him to go, he quickly slipped away from her and jogged several steps ahead out of the room.

            “Raul did a good job with that kid, Brisa,”  Rohzag called after her as she left, a chiding laughter in his voice.

            The woman turned on her heel to stare back at him, a dark look coming over her features,  “Fix that droid, Rohzag, or it’s you who will be hairless and out in the snow.”


End file.
